


Anniversary Place

by feralphoenix



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, F/M, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-09
Updated: 2011-07-09
Packaged: 2017-10-21 04:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/221149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At least by now she knows better than to deny it when a mirror is being held up to her face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anniversary Place

Rose woke to the pale dark of pre-sunrise morning.

Enough light was seeping from behind the blinds that she could see the faint outlines of everything in the bedroom: the sheets, the other side of the bed and John’s messy hair, and the outline of the shallow recuperacoon with the vertically bisected hourglass of Kanaya’s side rising from the slime.

It took her no longer to realize that something was missing and what that something was. Rose was used to the dark and woke quickly and completely.

She slid down from the bed quietly, slipped through the half-open door, and padded barefoot down the flight of stairs.

The alchemiter room was a bust, as was the living room; Rose struck lucky on her third guess, the kitchen. The room was wide, divided into a dining area and the kitchen itself, grand and filled with appliances that any one of their number could only identify and work about half of, cordoned off by a tall counter that served as the borderline. There was a large oriel-style window, four panes down and four across, on the wall of the dining side that had a number of Kanaya’s squishy pillows propped in it.

Vriska was sitting naked on the bench the sill formed, facing the glass and gazing off towards the faint bloom of red-gold on the horizon.

Rose made no effort to conceal the sound of her steps as she crossed the room, coming to a stop at the counter. She leaned back against it and folded her arms, waiting to see if Vriska would speak first, observing her closely.

In the two years since the end of the game, everyone had gone through changes—she and John had begun to spring up, Kanaya had all but exploded with curves, Dave had gotten lankier, even Jade was filling out—and Vriska seemed to be catching the tail end of the growth spurt. She was taller these days, but still thin—her ribs cast shadows against her skin, and the steel blue pucker of scar tissue down her sternum hadn’t faded. Her hands, the line of her chin, her collarbones and thin breasts were still sharp lines. Only her eyes had changed, the irises gone from gray to the color of faded denim.

It was fitting, and called to mind a half-forgotten once-read phrase, that _her body was made up of broken glass_. Outside the house, Vriska was still all shrill cackles and maniac energy and vowels in measured octophilia, her boisterousness as obvious a mask as Karkat’s blustering and Dave’s calculated ennui. She was a tangle of yarn waiting to be unraveled, and because of what Vriska was to John and Kanaya—because there was all the time in the world now, at last—she can do the unraveling slowly and carefully.

(this was perhaps the first time, she noted, that she had ever seen this charming puzzle of a troll girl with her face not made up)

At last, she cleared her throat and arched her eyebrows slightly, the picture of calm amusement. “While I’m certainly a proponent of the armchair technique, I believe it should work much better if you actually monologue out loud.”

Finally, a reaction: Vriska snorted and reached up to push her hair out of her eyes. “Do I look like Terezi’s pet coolkid to you, Lalonde?”

This was a game Rose knew: the game of passive-aggressive deflection she had learned at her dearly departed mother’s knee. She simply raised her eyebrows a few millimeters and let Vriska’s statement stand.

“Whateeeeeeeever, I’m not looking for psych help. At least not from other people.”

“You seem rather melancholy, is all,” Rose said mildly, almost smiling. “If you’d rather have my calm analysis than Kanaya’s meddling or John’s good-natured concern, you’re welcome to take it.”

Vriska crossed her arms underneath her breasts and rolled her eyes, at last looking more like her usual self. Then she scowled in the direction of the sunrise again.

“I guess the human term is ‘examine your life, examine your choices’? I’m not used to the whole sleeping at night thing, I guess. So I’ve just been down here spacing out.” She scratched lightly at the vertical scar between her breasts and resettled herself on the cushions. Somehow Rose got the feeling that if Vriska were typing these words, there would be a proliferation of eights smattered throughout the vowels, her fingers gravitating towards the number keys while her mind was too busy with feelings to stop them. “You know what I mean.”

Rose looked over Vriska appraisingly, from her flyaway hair to the twist of her black lips all down the skinny length of her to her ankles, carelessly crossed too far away to act as a modesty shield, and fought the urge to finger the vague sun-shaped outline at her middle.

“I do know,” was all she said, and the two of them watched the creep of pink and gold across the dawning sky.

And then, at length, Rose stood up straight and let her hands slide to her hips instead.

“If you’re not going to sleep, you could always go and put on a pair of pants. I wouldn’t say no to some assistance in the kitchen.”

“Boss, boss, boss,” Vriska complained. “You’re letting Kanaya rub off on you waaaaaaaay too much.”

(but she pushed herself off the windowsill and left to rummage audibly through the house anyway.)


End file.
